Room Service

Chapter Eight

            “What?”

            “It’s half past eight!” I said, feeling my heart already beginning to pound beneath my shirt. “I’m supposed to be on the nine o’clock hotel shift this morning.”

            “Crap,” Leon said. “What about your parents? Aren’t they going to be worried sick about the fact you’ve been out all night?”

            “Luckily I had the sense to text them yesterday,” I assured him, with some overwhelming relief of my own. “When I figured we’d be out late, I said I was staying over at a friend’s. So I guess that’s one less problem to deal with. But we do need to get back to the hotel right this minute.”

            “I’m on it.” Leon clambered over the gearstick, almost throwing himself into the driver’s seat and thrusting the key into the ignition. Quickly, I climbed into where he’d had been sleeping just minutes ago, my seatbelt clipping into place just as the car moved off the curb.

            He was really pushing his speed all the way back to Walden, but I wasn’t about to complain. Looking at the broken clock on Leon’s dashboard was useless, of course, so I had to resort to checking my phone incessantly over the course of the journey. The roads were mostly clear, coming to the end of the window of pre-beach traffic, and we were actually making pretty good time.

            That, of course, didn’t stop me imagining the telling-off I’d receive from my dad when I showed up late for my shift, having not showered or put a brush through my hair.

            Thankfully, we turned into the hotel car park with five minutes to spare, leaving my breathing just enough time to return to a normal rate.

            “Just in time,” I said, pulling down the sun visor and checking my hair in the overhead mirror. It was still pulled into a ponytail, which had almost entirely fallen out over the course of the night, and I yanked the band out to start combing it down with my fingers. It certainly didn’t look like I’d spent any time at all styling it that morning, but at least it was less of a giveaway to the fact I’d been sleeping on a pop star’s backseat.

            Leon didn’t bother putting on his sunglasses as we climbed out of the car; the walk up to the hotel’s entrance wouldn’t take more than twenty seconds, and it all seemed pretty quiet anyway. I hurried up the steps with him on my tail and pushed through the main doors.

            Luckily, we’d timed it so that Rosemarie wouldn’t even be out of bed yet, let alone anywhere near the hotel, so there was almost no danger of her unexpected appearance.

            As it turned out, however, what we did come face-to-face with was a whole lot worse.

            There was a girl stood at the counter; she was tall and lean, oozing confidence in shoes so high I wouldn’t have been able to take a step in them. With her tight black skirt, she must’ve been baking in the summer heat, but wasn’t showing it. I didn’t pay her much attention initially; there were other things on my mind. But when her head snapped in our direction, and Leon simultaneously stopped in his tracks, I realised something was going on.

            “Leon.” I couldn’t work out the thoughts behind the girl’s facial expression; her lip was curled slightly at the edges, and the single word seemed to bounce right off the walls of the room. A glance back at me, and Leon looked entirely like a deer in headlights.

            “Collette?” he said eventually. “What are you doing here?”

            “Actually,” she said, taking a remarkably balanced step forward, “I think I’m the one who should be asking that question.”